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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE 



By LYMAN WHITNEY ALLEN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN :y2 Poem 

Fourth (Centennial) Edition 

A PARABLE OP THE ROSE, AND OTHER POEMS 

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE: A Poem 



The Triumph of Love 
A Poem 



By 
Lyman Whitney Allen 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Gbe fl?nickerbocker press 

1909 



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Copyright, 1909 



LYMAN WHITNEY ALLEN 



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IN REMEMBRANCE OF MY MOTHER, 
JULIA OLDS WHITNEY. 

No words can tell the priceless worth 

Of one who, though in Heaven, doth brood 

O'er changing scenes of time and earth 
With changeless motherhood. 

'T was she, God's leal confederate, 

High priestess of the vanished years, 
Who opened childhood's every gate 
. Through which the sky appears. 

'T was she who showed the founts of power 
Whence goodness rises, wisdom springs, 

And courage flows, — a triple dower 
For manhood's venturings. 

'T was she who poured the mystic wine 
Of joy from Duty's chaliced heart, 

And set Faith's sacramental sign 
Above the paths of art. 

Her life was love's full ministry, 

A wealth of prayer and service strong; 

In bonds to her, by Love's decree, 
I sing this triumph song. 



CONTENTS 



I. 


Prelude: Invocation to Nature 


PAGB 

I 


II. 


Happy Colour! . 


3 


III. 


O Wonderous Chlorophyl! . 


6 


IV. 


The Call of the Chloroplast 


8 


V. 


A Perfect Day 


IO 


VI. 


The Cry of the Chlorophyl . 


16 


VII. 


Apostrophe to Light 


18 


VIII. 


The Joy of the Leaves 


35 


IX. 


With the Soul of Nature 


38 


X. 


The Quickening of Man 


40 


XI. 


Interlude: Invocation to thi 
Soul .... 


i 

44 


XII. 


Apostrophe to Love 


49 


XIII. 


The Spirit's Chlorophyl 


67 


XIV. 


The Call of the Earth 


70 


XV. 


Hymn to the Sacrificial Heart 


73 


XVI. 


The Opened Blue 


75 



VI 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


XVII. 


The Ethereal Spending 


77 


XVIII. 


The Great Ascension . 


80 


XIX. 


Love's Diffusing . 


88 


XX. 


Redemption's Revealings 


9 1 


XXI. 


Interlude: Invocation to thi 


5 




Poet .... 


93 


XXII. 


The Wonder Spell 


97 


XXIII. 


The Infinite Weal 


IOI 


XXIV. 


Rose of Paradise 


i°5 


XXV. 


The Miracle 


107 


XXVI. 


The Larger Nature 


in 


XXVII. 


The Great Responding 


"3 


XXVIII. 


The Infinite Hope 


116 


XXIX. 


The Golden Vision 


120 


XXX. 


The Larger Man 


123 


XXXI. 


Reclamation 


"5 


XXXII. 


Reconstruction . 


127 


XXXIII. 


The Infinite Cheer 


129 


XXXIV. 


The Larger World 


133 



CONTENTS VU 

PAGE 

XXXV. The Infinite Trust . . .136 

XXXVI. The Dream's Fulfilment . . 139 

XXXVII. The Chant Triumphal . . 141 

XXXVIII. Postlude: The Song Unending . 145 



I. 

PRELUDE: INVOCATION TO NATURE. 

S~\ NATURE ! whoso bows before thy shrines 
Kneels at innumerous altars, mystic signs 
Of Deity, minute as they are vast, 
And vast as thou, since each in thee holds fast. 
Thou art expression of th' Eternal Will, 
Revealment of Life's cycles that fulfil 
Through Light and Love God's Dream of Destiny 
Redemptional for earth and air and sea 
And man, the paramount, to whom belongs 
The birthright governance of cosmic throngs, 
The earth-right fealty to Wisdom's streams 
Of potence wheresoe'er creation teems. 



2 PRELUDE : INVOCATION TO NATURE 

Inclusive bloom and star and wonders all 
Feel the deep interchanges of that thrall 
'Neath which the skies are opened and earth's 

space 
Throbs with the ranks of Heaven's descending 

grace. 
So may I hope, upon thy mediate stairs, 
To hear some strain thy harmony declares, 
To feel some touch of trailing robe and wing, 
To breathe the flame of some near ravishing, 
And learn to chant the symbols and the tropes 
Thou giv'st the poet as he upward gropes. 



II. 

O HAPPY COLOUR! 

/-^OD keeps not His loved livery from the 

earth, 
But lavishly and mystically robes 
Her form, as though she were a million globes, 
With one great glory at the Spring's new birth. 

Green is God's choicest colour. What voice sings 

Its amplitude of beauty? Everywhere 

It spreads upon the earth its sorcerings. 

If 't were not God's elect would Nature wear 

Such mantling in wide acreage? Each tint 

Beside it is but as a painted sphere 

In virid firmament, a bright imprint 

Of variance that makes the green more dear. 



4 o happy colour! 

O happy colour hueing hill and vale! 

Thy bright return I hail. 

Thou art the ground of Nature's garniture 

Of beauty softly pure 

And figuring evolvements of high aim 

O'er earth's illumined frame. 

Thou art the blazonry of verdurous slope, 

Spring's mantling robe of hope. 

Thou art the broidery of opening leaf, 

Spring's silencer of grief. 

Thou art delight's refreshing recompense 

For each desiring sense. 

The weary eye and troubled heart find rest 

When thou art manifest. 

The robins love thee and the apple blooms 

Share with thee Spring's perfumes. 

Thou generous art to every bird and beast 

And Nature's lover-priest. 



o happy colour! 5 

Thou stayest kindly through the afterglow 

While roses come and go. 

When asters fail and fades the goldenrod, 

Thou art for Love and God. 

Thou art the subtle symbol of God's grace 

That covers every place 

The heart counts bare with delicate tenderness 

Unchanging with the stress 

Of season-tides, — unchanging Love's embrace. 



happy colour, sacred mystery! 

1 lilt on lowly knee 

Bewildered over thee and all thou art. 
Deep-drinking at the Springtime's brimming 

well 
I worship Nature's Lord invisible 
And scourge my faltering heart. 



III. 

O WONDROUS CHLOROPHYL! 

r\ WONDROUS Chlorophyll 

I sink my thought and will 
Down deep into the Spring 
With anxious questioning, 
To know the heart of thee 
And Nature's wizardry. 



God doth not all unfold, O soul! 

Else thou might 'st tire of lore. The whole 

He limits with the farthest rim 

Of space. Not e'en the seraphim 
6 



O WONDROUS CHLOROPHYL ! 

Have vision thou desirest. Thou 
"With them must grow from now to now, 
Behold the present after toil, 
The future endlessly uncoil. 



IV. 

THE CALL OF THE CHLOROPLAST. 

"HP WAS music known by the inner sense,- 

The poet's ear, — that, hearkening, 
Heard Life's mysterious conference 
And Nature's voices ring. 



The hiding Chloroplast 

Called loud to the Chlorophyll — 
" The storage of suns thou hast, 

Give, give, for the good o'er the ill! 
The morning is come, be swift, 
Drink light, give might, for the lift 
That comes with the dawn to the world 



THE CALL OF THE CHLOROPLAST 

And every leaf unfurled; 

For I and mankind must work; 

A curse on the leaves that shirk! 

The morning is come ; the burgeoning earth 

Awaits thine essential worth; 

Acknowledge, O leaves, the effulgent power! 

Absorb the ethereal dower! 

Break, foliage, multiple spears of death ! 

Send forth the rejuvenant breath ! 

The hymns of the hills and vales ascend ; 

The sheep and the oxen blend 

Their chants with the thrushes' roundelay, 

With echoing tramp of perfumed feet 

And Beauty's carolings wild and sweet, 

Fair usherers of the day. 

This day must enter with gleam and song 

Where perfect days belong." 



V. 
A PERFECT DAY. 

A PERFECT day! 'Tis Nature's crowning 
feature, — 

Th' appointed goal 

Of sense and soul, 
The opulent joyousness of every creature; 
The miracle time, the top of the Spring, 

With mystical moods 

Of meadows and woods 
And all the earth awake and awing; 
The summery edge of the fledgling year, 

With sorcerous spell 

Of brooklet and dell 
And magical musk of mountain and mere, 

IO 



A PERFECT DAY II 

With wizardry winds of the sumptuous South, 

Freed secrets and sweets, 

And tumult that greets 
Enravishing kisses at amorous mouth. 



A perfect day ! 'T is Nature at one 

With Love's full measure, 

With God's good pleasure 
And deep content at descent of the sun. 
'T is wrought in the innermost sphere of graces, 

The wisdom-weavings 

Of soul-achievings 
And Nature's instinctive diapases. 
'T is in the mind that has holy dreaming, — 

The mind that sees 

What God decrees, 
Love's realised redeeming. 



12 A PERFECT DAY 

'T is in the heart that creates all beauty,- 

The heart that shows 

What God bestows, 
Love's paths of sovran duty. 
'T is in the will that fashions action, — ■ 

The will that dares 

What God declares, 
Love's deeds of benefaction. 



A perfect day! 'T is in commutual bliss 
Of sense and soul that lilt high loyalties 
To rapt revealings of Nature's heart, 
Immediate feelings the skies impart ; 
Surrendering sense that has felt the touch 
Compelling more out of Nature's much; 
Controlling soul that has paid the price 
For th' opened heavens by sacrifice. 



A PERFECT DAY 13 

'T is in Love's service from hour to hour 
And Love's rewards God seals as power. 



The outer is hued by the inner frame, 
The splendour of spirit's psychic flame; 
The outer world has its colouring 
As th' inner mind doth plain or sing; 
The perfect heart makes the perfect day, 
The heart of a child in man's array. 



The glory of Nature rejoices not 

The eye or ear that has selfdom's blot. 

The self that for others is truly lost 

Is truly saved, — this is rapture's cost; 

The perfect day is the day laid waste 

In placing a life where God's thought placed 



14 A PERFECT DAY 

All lives when His vast Creatorhood 
Established the world and pronounced it good. 



What God called good the best becomes 
Through sacrificial millenniums; 
Man fashions God's superlatives 
By what co-operant service gives, 
And as God's imaged complement 
Works Nature's laborous ascent, 
Until upon Time's ancient peaks 
Shines the perfection Wisdom seeks, 
The Good's increasing gatherings 
From Life's unceasing round of things. 



O perfect day! from the heights apart 
Foretastes of thee rejoice the heart ; — 



A PERFECT DAY 1 5 

The subtle breathings of occult winds, 

The sweet includings of brooding minds, 

Familiars of Joy whose sinews strove 

To fashion the raiment the white seers wove 

In vision for kings and anointed ones 

Whose halls are built in the central suns 

Where Love holds court and His sway supreme 

Makes real the soul's ideal dream. 



VI. 

THE CRY OF THE CHLOROPHYL. 

HPHE poet heard as the Chlorophyl 
Cried "Hail!" to the rising sun. 

The poet felt the descending thrill 

And wavelets of splendour run. 

Each tiny grain was an emerald cup 

That drank the radiance up, 

A chalice abrim with sorcerous wine, — 

Elixir of morning's shine. 

The poet felt the light as it swayed 

The green of the mead and glade; 

He sensed the invisible streams of health, 

The firmament's vital wealth, 
16 



THE CRY OF THE CHLOROPHYL 1 7 

The joy of the earth, the rapture tide 

Of Nature revivified. 

His being throbbed with the passionate flood 

Of life in his burgeoning blood; 

He leaped with the springing things of the morn 

And sang as the day was born: — 

" Rejoice, for the Lord of the skies is come 

And Life is too glad to be dumb ! 

Hail, Light of the world, the Master and King 

Of Nature's recovering!" 



VII. 

APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT. 

T I AIL, light of the world, pure life to earth I 

What poet may sing thy worth ? 
Bewildering transcendence of flame! 
What seer may translate thy name? 
Hail, rhythmical glory, defying rime 
On either side of time ! 

Thou wert — how long? — ere the Deity 

Began His exploits through thee. 

Thou wert — how long? — ere the primal star 

Prefigured Love's calendar. 

Thou wert — how long? — ere the firstling clay 

Commenced its ascension way. 
18 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 1 9 

Thou wert the vesture the prophets limn 

Of mystical cherubim; 

Thou wert the raiment of seraph files 

That trod Edenic aisles ; 

Thou yet remainest what Fealty wears 

Down Love's Bethelian stairs ; 

Thou shalt be ever redemptive dress 

Of Wisdom's diffusedness, 

For sake of the Dream creation holds 

And Power through Love unfolds. 



Thou wert the trail of the Sovran Word 

When first was registered 

The Infinite Love on the orbless space, 

And God's unbosomed grace 

Turned flowings of unbeginning fire 

To Nature's spheric quire, — 



20 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

The morning stars and the sons of morn,- 
For sake of the world first-born, 
For sake of the Love that knows no rest 
Save in the Dream's acquest. 



Hail light, ineffable energy! 

God's life is thy source since He 

Spake forth and forth thou didst open in space, 

Far-straining Love's wide embrace. 

"Let there be light!" and the light did spring 

To cosmic adventuring. 

" Let there be light! " and the dark became 

Creation's luminous frame. 

O life of the Word ! thou didst break and brood 

A firmament's multitude 

Of suns and gyrings of fiery force 

O'er Nature's disturbed course, 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 21 

Reforming chaos, arresting wreck, 

And giving rebellion check, — 

Rebellion that turned white spirits to black 

And started the welkin's wrack. 



Bright swallower of the dark ! thy power 

Transmutes its co-operant dower. 

Thou hidest the dark in thyself ; the murk 

Thou forcest unto thy work ; 

Entomber of gloom in thy glory! thy need 

Is darkness, thy chariot and steed. 

Ethereous substance for light's display, 

Light's undulant highway, 

The darkness — Nature apart from light — 

The means for the Infinite Might 

To manifest the Infinite Will 

And Infinite Thought fulfil! 



22 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

The darkness ! Nature constrained to be 

The subtle capacity 

Of matter for Spirit's outpouring flood 

Of glory achieving good. 

What sheer defeat unto Love's high hope 

Without the dark for its scope ! 



Ethereal effluence, swift and sure, 

Electrically pure! 

Thou art the undefiled, and as well 

The undeniable. 

Thou racest with multiple feet and wings, 

For holy embellishings, 

O'er waving elastical waste unseen 

Whose energies intervene 

'Twixt clod and sun, an etheric sphere 

Infilling each vibrant here. 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 23 

Across the dark thou dost speed and spread; 

Thou openest heart and head 

Of life and potence ; thou bringest out 

The features and forms devout 

Of secret fantasies, shapes ideal 

Of Beauty to Wisdom leal. 



O light of the world, enfreedomed power! 

How rich is thy daily dower, 

The crown and robe and the signet ring 

Of Nature's creative King — 

Of Nature that knows no shame, — Desire 

That feels high God as Sire, 

And hides not, mounting the morning peaks, 

Displaying roseate cheeks 

And eyes resplendent with passion's gleams, 

The mirrors of Love's high dreams, 



24 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

And joins Delight's matutine hymn 
'Mid quiring seraphim, 
Safe-guarding o'erwhelming plentitude 
Of Wisdom's conclusive good! 



O light, thou art of the heart of the sun! 
Apocalypses run 

To north, to south, to east, to west, 
From out his eager breast, 
Fire-sandalled, flashing in vibrant flame 
Life's supernatural frame. 



White-sworded annihilator of Night, 
Creator of Dawn's foresight, 
The finisher of nocturnal needs, 
The starter of matin deeds ! 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 25 

Thou art beginning of Good's display, 

Whose other name is Day, — 

Day for th' awakening eyes and ears 

That greet Love's atmospheres; 

Day for the bending sinew tense 

To hurl back reverence 

Into the vast abysm of power 

As Love bursts into flower; 

Day for th' ecstatic bloom and bliss 

Of Life's high prophecies; 

Day for the deed that fulfils the dream 

And thrones the Good supreme. 

Hail Light, and Day, and the Dream that lies 

Against the whitening skies! 



O light of the world, rich giver of good? 
All hail to thy bountihood! 



26 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

Thou offerest freely and askest not, — 

Empyreal patriot! 

All men and things are of worth to thee, 

Bestower of liberty ! 

Thou shinest alike on rich and poor 

With stintless unwasting store; 

Thy touch is the same on hill and vale, 

On sparrow or nightingale ; 

Thou blessest, as God, the best, the worst, 

And knowest no last or first. 



Thou fallest on snowy pinnacles, 

Outflinging magic spells 

From peak unto peak, fast reddenings 

Of morning's underwings. 

Thou changest gorges from black to blue, 

Far-flaunting thy variant hue 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 2j 

Upon th' illimitable pines, 
Where Nature's occult shrines 
Unveil into golden sanctity 
Beside an emerald sea. 



Imperial, immaterial white! 

All colours in thee unite. 

Imponderable composite sheen! 

All colours through thee are seen. 

Thou fallest upon responsive plains 

Bestowing thy prismy rains; 

Thou givest glory to barrenness, 

And weavest earth's royal dress 

In meadowy tincts, in orchard dyes, 

In garden tapestries, 

In irised blossoming fulness spread 

For Fantasy's soft tread. 



28 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

The rose's crimson is gift from thee; 
Commutual dignity- 
She feels with the purple violet 
And greensward's larger debt. 
Thou wooest the vintage from the earth ; 
Thou givest the forest birth; 
Thou shinest, piercing the heart of clay, 
And sendest on skyward way 
Th' imprisoned seeds of miracle 
Awaiting burgeoning spell. 



Thou fallest upon the ocean, 

Whose billows wild and wan, 

Escaped from the Night's enthralling frame, 

Awake into foam of flame. 

Thyself art an ocean of radiance 

Round Nature's isled expanse. 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 29 

Thou mantlest rhythmic gulf and crest 

And liltingly lingerest 

O'er yeasty exaltations, — trysts 

For troth of the fogs and mists, — 

Blue mists for the dawn's unveiling grace, 

Mauve fogs for the dusk's embrace. 

Thou flashest into the glamorous brine 

Where purpling fathoms shrine 

Enchained riches of imagery 

Till there shall be no more sea. 



Ascension bringer of luminous change 

To destiny's forward range! 

Thou makest whate'er thou touchest teem 

With altitudinal gleam; 

Thou paintest with flame cathedral panes 

And goldenest altar fanes; 



30 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

Thou crownest the city's towers and spires 

With Heaven-suggesting fires; 

Thou spreadest the streets with garniture 

Of cheer's transfiguring lure ; 

Thou gladdenest the toiler's heart 

Assuaging labour's smart 

With mystical sense of a holy care, 

A feeling the skies declare, — 

Like light, an impassioned paradigm, — 

Like love, an illumined rime. 

Invincible master of earth and skies! 

The vision of thee descries 

The breathing that turns despair to joy, 

Bequeathing that burns accloy. 



Hail, light of the world, life-giving light! 
Thou art Love's proselyte 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 3 1 

Of every essence electrical 

That hides 'neath Nature's thrall. 

Thou art cherubical covering, 

Anointed breast and wing, 

Low-sweeping over earth's farthest edge, 

High maker of privilege, 

God's aeriest brooding of motherhood, 

Unfolding enfolding good. 



Thou art th' empyreal livery 

Of Love who dwells in thee. 

Thou art the vestment Love ventures by 

Creation to justify. 

Thou art the armour Love battles in 

Against the hordes of sin. 

Thou art the garment Love leaps into 

To fashion earth anew. 



32 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

Life's pure beatitude ! quickening earth, 

Hard-straining to give re-birth 

To every creature, illuming death, 

Sure-proving what Wisdom saith: — 

" Death serveth for Life, and all life comes 

Through Love's millenniums 

Back out of failure into success, 

From sin unto holiness, 

Back into Eden and Nature's joy, 

Back to the supreme employ 

Of nerve and sinew and yearning soul 

For sake of predestined goal." 



Effulgent gift of the Life Divine! 
Regeneration's sign; 
Ecstatic essence of grace outpoured 
From Love's eternal hoard, 



APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 33 

Through Nature's core and circumference 

The Trinal Power's expense; 

A vitalising compulsiveness ; 

A psychical impress; 

An entering of an aura sweet; 

A penetrating heat; 

A breathing of tenderness circlewise 

'Gainst inner ears and eyes; 

A lingering sense of the Eucharist, 

Whose ravishings persist 

In mystical moods of soul and flesh 

That ope the heavens afresh. 



O Light of the world, O Life Divine! 
Forever thy glories shine, 
The features of Love emparadised, 
The Face of the conquering Christ. 



34 APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT 

The beat of our hearts and His are one; 
The endless joy is begun; 
We walk in the stream of Thy ecstasy; 
Our spirits are filled with Thee, 
O Light that art Love and Life from the soul's 
unsetting Sun! 



VIII. 
THE JOY OF THE LEAVES. 

'T'HE poet heard the rustle of leaves 

Caught up into windy snares; 
The poet saw the wizard that weaves 

The intricate music and swears 
Hymned oaths to the furthest ecstatic sum 
Of joys unto which the ages come. 



The dictatorial leaves cried out 
Ahungered. The poet turned about 
Devotional, leal worshipper 
Of Nature and God's ideals of her. 



30 THE JOY OF THE LEAVES 

A shadow fell from his eyes like a veil; 

An arrowy rhythm pierced his ears ; 

He visioned the Spring's illumined trail; 

He heard what is only vouchsafed to seers, - 

The plasmic music, — and, underneath, 

The passionate troll of the soul of things, 

The love that uses the earth as a sheath, 

The life of love that unceasing sings; 

He listened, as only the poet lists; 

He saw, as only the poet sees, 

The leaves, creation's philanthropists, 

Achieving their ministrant chemistries; 

The joy of the leaves, absorbing death 

And lavishing life for the world-wide breath. 



He heard the laughter of foliage, 

The lilting of Nature's increasing wage, 



THE JOY OF THE LEAVES T>7 

The frolic of hope that ascends from doom, 
The dancing delight of the whitening bloom; 
He sensed the throb in the robin's throat, 
The pulse in the brooklet's rippling rote, 
The ends of the world in mystic swing, 
The azureward surge of earth's burgeoning; 
Within his heart and about his feet 
He felt the wakening wild and sweet, 
A sorcerous aura the sun sets free, 
Th' adjusting goodness of Deity. 



IX. 
WITH THE SOUL OF NATURE. 

HPHE poet beheld the awakening spread, - 
Light vanquishing Night and Death, 
And Life o'ercoming as flame that is fed 
With morning's hurricane breath. 



The poet's soul was one with the soul of Nature, 
And sang the rejuvenant song of e very- 
creature, — 
The song of the earth and air and sea, 
The song of the quadruple mystery, — 
Cherubical eagle and ox and lion 
And man, the Almighty's dominion scion, 



WITH THE SOUL OF NATURE 39 

And Love that is Light and is universal, 

And Light that is Power for Love's rehearsal; 

The vision of seer on bardic tongue, 

The gleam of the Dream extending ; 
The rime of the climb of the ageless young, 

And grace for the race expending. 
Awake, soul, for the earth is new! 
Arise, O soul, for Delight's review! 
Join Beauty's and Joy's recoverings! 
And list, while the poet soothly sings 
Of the bursting sod, 
Of the Heart of God, 
And what lies 'twixt of miracle things! 



X. 

THE QUICKENING OF MAN. 

T^HE poet beheld the face 

Of man and his quickened gait, 
Clear eyes, red lips, and the trace 

Of blither scorning of fate. 
Man leaped, he ran, he strove 
With deeps, through the mountains clove. 

He dug the gold from the hills ; 

He covered the vales with wheat; 
'Mid myriad marts and mills 

He set his unwearied feet; 

The seas buoyed his chariots 

Commanding with battle shots. 
40 



THE QUICKENING OF MAN 4 1 

He circled the globe about 

With spindle and wheel and shaft, 
With industry's surge and shout, 

With benison-laden craft, 
His lore, his law, his song, 
His faith that o'erthrows the wrong. 

Ethereal wine! Thou art 

The gift of the chlorophyl; 
Ideal ! Thy lower heart 

Is turned to the higher will, — 
The man for the world entire, 
The man with the spade and lyre. 

Ethereal wine ! Thou hast 

The lift of the rhythmic sphere; 

Ideal! Thou art forecast 
Of Liberty's pioneer, — 



42 THE QUICKENING OF MAN 

The man for the race of men; 
The man with the sword and pen. 

The man for the world with lyre and spade; 

The man for the race with pen and sword; 
The man for the world where the Hope is laid; 

The man for the race where the Dream is 
stored; 
The eagle man, with the sun-turned eyes ; 

The lion man, with the eyes of flame; 
The king of the world, whose high emprise 

Beats strong in his heart and God's the same, 
With passion that dares, like encroaching fire 

Enwrapping the iron with tongues white-hot, 
The dross for its loss in the cindering pyre, 

The steel for its weal in the furnace got; 
The man of the world 'mid the world's increase, 
Prepared for battle but courting peace, 



THE QUICKENING OF MAN 43 

Evangel of good but clad in mail 

And floating the truth's dominion sail; 

The tyrant to wrong, the slave to right, 

The herald elect of Love and Light; 

The man of the race, the seer who waits 

The open waters beyond the straits ; 

"Who trusts his vision though lights burn low, 

Remembering God works deep and slow; 

Who senses the rhythms of destiny 

Blow into his soul from an unseen sea. 

The man who shall get control of the world 

And lay it, a great submissive thing, 
Low at Christ's feet, with the war flags furled 

And love o'erfiowing as from a spring 
Set deep in the heart of eternal hills, 
An inexhaustible life that fills 
The soul of the race with an endless peace 
And brotherhood's holy harmonies. 



XL 



INTERLUDE: INVOCATION TO THE SOUL. 

f~^* OD keeps not His loved livery from the soul, 

But lavishly and mystically robes 
Her form as though she were a million globes 
With one vast glory working blessed goal. 



O soul, the world of Nature's benison! 

Thou art God's spiritual sphere whereon 

He, Artist limitless in high designs 

And broad fulfilments, delicately lines 

Eternal wisdom, truth, each brilliant hue 

Of His enduring grace the ages through. 
44 



INVOCATION TO THE SOUL 45 

O countless souls of centuries past, to be ! 

Phenomena of the Great Trinity! 

Creations of the Uncreated Word ! 

A part of God's revealings seen and heard ! 

Ye are His spiritual orbs of light 

Afloat in oceans of His holy might, 

The morning stars that Love's adventure sing, 

The sons of God that shout Love's wayfaring. 



O soul! how may the poet sing of thee, 
The praise of God and Love's great mystery? 
The souls of others knows he by his own. 
When Love flashed light across his heart and 

shone 
A sun upon his dark, he felt sweet power 
Rise in him, into shoot and leaf and flower, 
And all his inner world went verduring, 



46 INVOCATION TO THE SOUL 

And all his outer world was one great Spring, — 
Blue sky, green earth, bird song, south wind, 

and all 
Life's festal robes and voices 'neath the thrall 
Of Love that makes all beauty, all delight, 
Of Love through which the soul and earth unite. 



O soul! thou art of God, thou subtlest grace 

Of Trinal life and goodness, earthly trace 

Of the invisible Creatorhood, 

That Heavenly whose unseen yearnings brood 

To bless the earthly with high mothering! 

From the Eternal Spirit thou didst spring 

His rounded glory's full-orbed miniature, 

For thought, for love, for power forth from the 

Pure 
To work the pure and fill th' egregious dark 



INVOCATION TO THE SOUL 47 

With holy scintillations spark by spark 
Outflung until the populous earth should move 
With God's unnumbered living forms of love. 



How may e'en wisest poet sing of thee, 
Beholding thine unfolding destiny? 
Within thyself, O soul! th' Eternal dwells 
And works, as thou dost choose, immediate 

spells. 
He brings thee odours from sky bowers afar 
On winds of inspiration. Wings that are 
The veils and chariots of seraphim 
He folds about thee. Rapture's choral hymn, 
That floods celestial spaces with high bliss, 
He opes thine ears to hear. And the sweet kiss 
Of Love that holds the heavens against eclipse 
Falls an ecstatic fire upon thy lips; 



48 INVOCATION TO THE SOUL 

And thou dost see th' unfading robe of Spring 
And that great Summer, where the roses swing 
Unceasing censers of delight, where broods 
Of minstrels sweet lose not their fluting moods, 
Where dancing feet ne'er tire, where every veil 
Lies fallen like a rainbow in the trail 
Of Love's complete revealment, where the thrall 
Of one great Essence whist and mystical 
Prevails with rhythmic surgings of strange 

power; 
Where every instinct bursts to full-blown flower, 
And every thought transmutes to instant might, 
And life is music and desire delight, 
While one white glory of one storied Face, 
Streaming with Love's supreme and strenuous 

grace, 
Triumphantly enfolds th' unfolding race 



XII 
APOSTROPHE TO LOVE. 

1 AIL Love that didst exist ere Nature came ! 
Thou wert God's very essence, form and 
name. 
In Him Thou movedst while He moved through 

Thee; 
Thou mad'st Him the Eternal Trinity; 
In Thee Himself He saw and recognised 
Th' eternal vision of th' Eternal Christ, 
And in His Twain conjoined His Holy Third, — 
Godhood complete through Spirit and through 

Word,— 
For light's creation, for life's permeant flow 

4 49 



50 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

Of circumambient grace, creation's show 
Of glory through the constant opening 
Of Deity in Nature's every spring. 



Hail Love, preceder of prevailing light! 

Thou wert ere light began its mission bright. 

In God was life, — life that was light divine; 

In God was love, — love that was seal and sign 

Of Being Infinite, since Spirit that sees 

Itself exist beholds through mysteries 

Of Love alone the Love that holds large eye 

And mirror large for sight, impels the cry 

Of recognition and high movement wakes, 

The primal light and light's prime motion 

makes, — 
Love's birthless cycle, — Love that first begets, 
Rounds into Trinal vision, then besets 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 51 

The universal emptiness with forms, 
Deific miniatures, sidereal swarms 
To suns evolving, and at last, perchance, 
The highest frame of Nature's long advance, 
That other, that ethereal earthly son, 
Th' elect of Love, for wide dominion, 
Begot, create, union of soul and clay, 
Coeval with creation's final day. 



Hail Love, Thou Life of God! Thou art the Will 
That moves the universe. Thy motions fill 
All space with goodness ; Thou hast only good 
For all creation; every creaturehood 
Springs forth from God in Love's illumined sea 
Of goodness, whose sweet perpetuity 
Is God's pervasive trace for life's employ, 
Is God's persuasive grace for Nature's joy. 



52 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

Hail Love, Thou watcher at the timeless springs 

Of Being! Thou art farthest compassings 

Of governance that holds what God has wrought 

In wisdom, power and ever-varying thought, 

Adjusting King to kingdom, wheresoe'er 

Th' enlarging acreage is. From sphere to sphere 

Thou art beginning and continuance 

Of beauty, wonder, — the divine romance 

That starts ethereous music and conducts 

The eons into rapturous usufructs 

Of Nature's constant and benefic stream 

Of good, forever working out th' Eternal Dream. 



Th' achieving of the Dream, th' omnific beat 
Of God's engaged love, the cadence sweet 
That falls across the lure-ways of the moon, 
Betrays the presence of the morning's shoon 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 53 

And that wild summer breath of fragrant winds 
Touching seolian rose-harps, softly binds 
The garden glamour and th' enamoured heart 
In measures of th' Eternal Love's mellifluous art. 



Through Love the world's beginning and its end 
Into the universal newness blend, — 
That newness got by travails numberless 
Through sin and death and fearsome judgment 

stress, 
The rockings of the cosmic fundaments, 
The moanings of seraphical dissents, 
The broken heart of Heaven, the emptying 
Of power, bared back and breast to every sting 
And breakage of the fire and iron of lust, 
By sin-bearing, by Cross and spiked thrust, 
Black horror, the lost Face of God, and Hands 



54 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

Of Holiness outflinging to the brands 

Of burning retribution one pure Soul 

Vicarious for sake of Love's far goal, — 

That newness got by one great triumph-dower 

Of life divine and life's ascension power, — 

That newness got by conflagration strange, 

And the sea's passing, and descensive range 

Of the great Mystic City, and its King 

Appropriating Love's recovering, 

Sorrow eliminate, th' accomplished best 

And all the past a sacred palimpsest 

With God's fresh uncials writ for tearless eyes, 

Revealment of victorious emprise, — 

Th' emprise of Love that works the Dream's 

decree 
For which as spoils hard-won on Calvary 
Fair mansions rise within an Eden new 
For souls renewed and whom the heavens endue. 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 55 

There is a sensive substance in the soul 

Which the flame-swordsmen of the heavens 

patrol 
For sake of God's great Dream. Eternal Love 
Can never know defeat, leading above 
The forces of the world His legions strong, 
Whose triumphs make the heart of all great 

song. 



Oh, happy is the poet who may sing 

Of Love's adventuring, 

And tell the story how He came to earth 

And of His wondrous birth; 

And how the pageant stars with new delight 

Went marching through the night; 

And how the earth awoke from centuried sleep 

Hearing the music sweep 



56 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

From orb to orb in sweet antiphonals 

Past Nature's farthest walls ; 

And how the Face of God wore a new sheen 

Which ne'er before was seen, — 

The glory of the vision of the spheres, 

Love's perfect circuiteers; 

And how angelic hosts were singing flames 

White-heaten by the aims 

Of sharing in the gladness of the world, 

When Love His wings unfurled. 



Oh, happy is the poet who may sing 
Love's later venturing, 
And tell the story how He came to earth, 
And of His lowly birth, — 
Bewildering emptying of kingliness, 
The dazzling regnant dress 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 57 

For the dark raimenting of servitude, 
Garden for desert rood 

And its one tree grown out of Nature's pain 
For Love's vicarious stain. 



Oh, happy is the poet who may sing 

Of Love's recovering, 

Love's emphasised dominion over death, 

Life's resurrection breath, 

And the re- robing up ascension ways 

With triumph's high displays, — 

Enthronement, coronation, life's new stream 

Of potence for God's Dream. 



O Love ! Thou Life of God invisible 
But working visioned spell, 



58 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

Diffused in instinct and each subtle mood 

Of Nature's spirithood, 

Commingling sky and earth with soul and sense 

In one great reverence 

For God and man, and that benefic end 

Toward which all forces blend. 



O love! Thou dost create continually, 

Setting Thy glories free 

To wander, life's ethereal essences 

Whose every touch doth bless, 

From centre to circumference of the earth, 

Bringing to holy birth 

Each daily gladness and ingathering 

Beholden hosts awing 

Around the pierced feet of One whose throne 

Is Love's eternal own. 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 59 

mystic Love that makest all things new! 

1 hunt Thee to the blue; 

I quest Thee to the centre of the globe; 

I follow Thy fair robe 

Upon the mountain- tops, across the vales; 

I seek Thee in the trails 

Of morning's aery wings, and in the boon 

Of eve's ethereal shoon; 

I search for Thee where bees find provender, 

Where honeysuckles stir 

The faery ruby-throat's mysterious wheels 

And where the dewdrop steals 

The filmy moonflower's white and chaliced heart 

Beneath the starlight's dart. 

I seek Thee where the eyes of troth and tryst 

Find Nature's alchemist, 

While every cloud is set in morning's gold, 

And desert ways unfold 



60 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

To garden glamours of the full-blown rose 
And thrushes' overflows. 



mystic Love that weavest every song! 

1 seek Thee in the throng 

That crowds the city's streets, and hear the strain 

Of gladness and of pain, 

The lyrics and the dramas of mankind 

Commingling in the wind 

Of circumstance, where Thou dost subtly hide, 

Heaven's earth-sent unseen guide. 

Thou visitest the city's tenement; 

Thy glory is forspent 

Upon the hungered, sick, a light uplift 

Against the dark and drift. 

Thou enterest the lonely prison cell; 

Thou work'st sweet miracle 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 6 1 

Upon the hardened heart, distorted mind 

And eyes to goodness blind. 

Thou gatherest the orphaned multitudes; 

Thy tender nature broods 

O'er God's selectest wards, — Thine oversight 

His Fatherhood's delight. 

Thou strewest roses upon iron beds; 

Thou crownest barren heads 

With fillets of the flowers of sympathy; 

At delicate hands of Thee 

Water from childhood's storied well is brought 

To lips with age o'erwrought; 

Thou puttest shoulder unto every cross ; 

Thou findest 'mid the dross 

The gold that gives despairing struggle worth ; 

Thou bringest unto birth 

High yearning waiting for its natal day 

From out abysmal clay; 



62 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

Thou sittest by the side of sorrow's heirs; 

Thy tender face 'gainst theirs; 

Thou provest Heaven's o'ershadowing of saints, 

Whose life Thy joyance paints, 

Whose ministry unbroken oft intrudes 

On Faith's superior moods, 

And souls, not knowing space, through Love 

discern 
The souls for which they yearn 
And that great Lord of Love whose endless 

glory is 
His body's indestructible commutal bliss. 



O mystic Love that joinest hearts and lips 
In nuptial comradeships 
Moving about the world from rim to rim 
Like stately seraphim! 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 63 

Thou buildest marriage altars into stairs 

That reach celestial airs, 

Whence troops angelical do oft descend 

And with earth's spousals blend. 

Thou finest Nature's cup with holy wine ; 

Thou fartherest joy's confine 

Beyond the white horizons of the sea 

Of deathless destiny; 

Thou limnest visions of sweet lastingness 

And ecstasy's access 

Into the house of many households kept 

For those who once have wept 

But in the great reunion weep no more, 

Having life's perfect store. 



O mystic Love! life's every plain and path 
Thy subtle glory hath. 



64 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

I hunt Thee on the battle-fields of shame 

Amid the cannon's flame, 

And in the thunder of its belching throat 

I list for Thy sweet note; 

Beside the pilots on sea-ploughing ships 

I seek apocalypse; 

Upon the steaming chargers of the rail 

Thy forward form I hail; 

Down in the ebon bowels of the mine 

Thy whiteness I divine; 

On every lifted stone against the sky 

Thy presence I descry; 

Beside the grave of buried hopes Thou art 

God's prophet to the heart; 

And at the minster's incensed altar stair 

I find Thee strength for prayer. 

O mystic Love! O passionate Paraclete! 

Thine aery wings and feet, 



APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 65 

Thy hands electrical, Thy dulcet tongue, 

Are vast diffusions sprung 

From Christ th' Invisible to fill the spheres 

And the ascension years 

With subtle sweetness, — neither song nor scent, 

But one high sacrament 

That makes the underdeeps of being rise 

And show forth Paradise 

Essential at th' unblighted heart of things 

Of which the poet sings. 



O mystic Love! I seek Thee not in vain; 

All things are in Thy train ; 

The poet's eyes, unholden as his heart, 

Discern Thee as Thou art; 

Oh may I sing a mediate canticle 

Of Love's immediate spell! 



66 APOSTROPHE TO LOVE 

And as my swelling heart Thy presence sees 
And feels Thy mysteries, 

May faltering song in some faint rime rehearse 
The inner universe. 



XIII. 

THE SPIRIT'S CHLOROPHYL. 

OVE is the colour of the soul; 
Love is the spirit's chlorophyl; 
It has its secret source and goal 

In Heaven's deep-working will. 

Not e'en the starry poet knows 

The bands of Love's irradiate thrall; 

Each other spectrum clearly shows; 
But Love's is mystical. 

God hides within divinest things, 

And guards His secrets jealously, — 

The most in Love; — so he who sings 

Of Love sings never free, 
67 



68 the spirit's chlorophyl 

But, ever swayed by some occult 

Strong sweetness, fine as breath that turns 
A feather's course, perceives result 

To every sense that yearns, — 

Th' infilling of descending light, — 

Knows Love as Power for Life's reclaim, 

More gentle than a marriage rite, 
Imperious as flame. 

The poet hides likewise within 

The covert fane of Love, in touch 

With that deep Grace he feels begin 
And shape impulsion such 

As makes for Spring, — for bloom, for song, 

And benedictions of the wind, 
The robins, roses, music strong 

Of the immediate mind. 



THE SPIRIT'S CHLOROPHYL 69 

Love works as works the chlorophyl, 
Absorbing life from light divine ; 

So comes the glory of God's will 
Upon the spirit's shrine. 



XIV. 

THE CALL OF THE EARTH. 

TPHE poet felt in the shrine 

The song-breath of Grace proclaim 
For seership, an aura of wine, 
An incense of flame. 

He heard in the holy deep 

The breath-song of Grace aspire 
For arthood, a dream out of sleep, 

An echo of fire. 

He heard as Earth called to the Sky, — 

"Descend thou, Spirit, descend!" 

He felt pinions open and fly, 

The firmament tremble and bend. 
7o 



THE CALL OF THE EARTH 71 

Each cloud was a shining zone 

By winds of the morning blown 

In cycles of glory that wheeled, 

Fire infilling fire unsealed. 

Stars shouted to planets; each moon 

For gladness of God was aswoon; 

For hope of the larger world 

All banners of space unfurled ; 

The skies were laden with wings 

That bore Heaven's venturings; 

A sweetness fell earthward and pressed 

Its spell upon Nature's breast ; 

The earth felt the magical tide, 

The joyance that vivified; 

And spirit knew spirit, and life 

Bent buoyant beneath the strife 

Of Light for the promised hour, 

Of Love for the perfect flower. 



72 THE CALL OF THE EARTH 

"When thou, poet ! hast a finer frame 

Through which th' evasive flame 

Thou feelest, and the subtle surge of song 

Thou hearest, may prolong 

Light, music, so that thou may'st safely bear 

The spirit's mountain air, 

Then shalt thou sing the Love that fills the world, 

The storms of rapture whirled 

In universal consonance around 

The spheres to farthest bound, 

And one great Sacrificial Heart forever crowned. 



XV. 

HYMN TO THE SACRIFICIAL HEART. 

/~\ SACRIFICIAL Heart! 

Help Thou my heart to sing 
The gift of Love Thou dost impart, 
The blessing Love doth bring. 

All Nature wakes to Thee 

In one thanksgiving strain ; 

She feels the holy mystery, 
The rapture after pain. 

I may not understand, 

So dull of sense am I ; 
But as my powers Thou dost expand 

Thy grace I glorify. 

73 



74 HYMN TO THE SACRIFICIAL HEART 

O Saviour of mankind, 

Remaker of earth's frame, 
Blow through me with Thy rushing wind, 

Crown with Thy tongues of flame ! 



XVI. 
THE OPENED BLUE. 

QOMEHOW is opened the farther Blue 
That circles the inner life of God ; 

Somehow a rapture pierces through 
The shaken veil, the broken clod, 

And all the earth is heavenly-new; 

While nothing e'er grows old again, 
And every fang is drawn from Pain. 



How sweet is the opened farther Blue 

That circles the spirit's inner sway! 
How sweet is the rapture that pierces through 

The vanishing veil, the transforming clay, 

75 



76 THE OPENED BLUE 

And all the earth is heavenly-new! 

While Life ne'er loses its morning spell, 
And Pain is ever Love's miracle. 



O holy sweets of the opened Blue 

That circles the spirit's present moods! 

O holy rapture that pierces through 
The flesh with countless beatitudes, 

And all the earth is heavenly-new! 

While Pain and Blessing together run, 
And those once Love's are forever one. 



XVII. 
THE ETHEREAL SPENDING. 

I SEE the skyey openings, 

I subtly feel my soul ascending, 
Caught up by some ethereal spending, 

The lift of Love's unvisioned wings. 

The atmosphere is crystalline; 

I sight afar the Mystic City 

Beyond th' unwearying wards of Pity, 
Where Love's commanding holies shine. 

The heavens and earth are strangely one; 
I go and come, the way is aery; 
While every fear and every query 

Is hushed in Love's communion. 

77 



•jS THE ETHEREAL SPENDING 

I view a Presence settling down, 
An overshadowing of glory, 
The grace of Love confirmatory 

Of troth and tryst for cross and crown. 

I hear the rustling of a Dove; 

I sense the Spirit's tender brooding, 
And God's embosomed Peace including 

My spirit 'neath the breast of Love. 

The heavens have touched the earth at length, 
Th' immortal with the mortal sharing; 
Anointing Love goes witness-bearing 

And girds man's mission with God's strength. 

I hark a music rolling high 

In rushing rhythms of inspiration; 

Love's overflow of exultation 
Bursting the azure dikes of sky. 



THE ETHEREAL SPENDING 79 

I heed the Blue's Beatitude; 

I feel my kindred forces waking, 
Love's oracle of purpose breaking 

The languor of my wavering mood. 

The heavens have spoken; earth has heard 
Avowal of Love's holy rapture ; 
Flesh is too frail for such high capture, 

The triumph of th' infilling Word. 



XVIII. 

THE GREAT ASCENSION. 

T^EYOND where fly the birds, where shine the 

stars, 
Where live the blessed dead, past Nature's bars 
And all things creaturely, a realm extends, 
Which, mystical as vast, none comprehends, 
Since none hath seen th' Eternal's dwelling- 
place, 
His omnipresent glory's higher space, 
The uncreated Heaven, wherein exist 
The founts of Love's perpetual Eucharist. 
All circumambient and limitless 

It folds with close embrace and sweet caress 
80 



THE GREAT ASCENSION 51 

The thrones of Deity, the lowliest seats 

Of slaved clay. Ubiquitous it beats 

With the great pulsings of Infinitude 

Through space, time, matter, spirit's every rood 

And every circumstance. Its presence fills 

Each pore etheric. Every atom thrills 

With power imponderable, subtle spring 

Of delicate tenderness, th' unbroken swing 

Of universal rhythms, soft thundery 

Of rapture heard by senses fine and free, 

Th' above and under of creation's base, 

The resting of the spheres' unresting race. 

O poet, overbold! 

Hide low thy face in dust! 
Thy fleshly eyes can never hold 

What God bestows in trust, 
Whose mysteries unfold. 



82 THE GREAT ASCENSION 

Close ears, inspired seer, 

To earth's accustomed sound! 

Sink soul into the atmosphere 
That wraps creation round, 

And note what thou may'st hear ! 

Thy spirit slips from thee, 

Lost to thyself and earth; 
It swims, it soars, through ecstasy 

Which ne'er hath known a birth,- 
Source of all joys that be. 



O mortal, vanished quite 

Beyond the creature veil! 

Strain thou for the empyreal height, 
See Love's ascension trail, 

List to the singing Light I 



THE GREAT ASCENSION 83 

Light sings to Love, and Love irradiant 
Responds to Light, and all the heavenlies chant 
Antiphonals of exultation. Sky- 
Greets earth with holy wonders. One vast cry 
Of serried rapture rises. Wheels on wheels 
Of glory haste, and welcoming music peals 
From multitudinous turnings. Clouds more 

bright 
With dazzlement than sun or star unite 
In swirls ecstatical of mortal shapes, 
Heaven's wildering immortals, round the capes 
Of isles ethereous of yet higher forms 
And whiter in the whitening tide that swarms 
From every whence to every whither, — all 
Light's interblending hosts seraphical 
Rejoicing each to each, o'erloading space 
With lightning wings, with heaving breasts and 

grace 



84 THE GREAT ASCENSION 

That bears unvoiced Victory's impress, 
Dimming galactic belts to nothingness. 



Light sings to Love, — Love that has fought and 

won, 
Love that becomes Itself through Self undone, 
Love that has plumbed unfathomable deeps, 
Love that has clomb immeasurable steeps, 
Love that for Life has counted life but dross, 
Love that has proved Itself on crimsoned Cross 
God and God Love, and the Creatorhood 
No failure, but the source of endless good 
And endless joyance, God's supreme success, 
And God's and man's enduring happiness. 

Light sings to Love up Love's ascension way; 
White clouds melt into luminous display 



THE GREAT ASCENSION 85 

Of winged embosoming of Love's dear Form; 

And all the blue is hid by one vast storm 

Of gladness, touching earth, and far and high 

Extending through th' illimitable sky. 

What holy envying of service sweet! 

What chasing fugues of seraph wings and feet ! 

Desire in spiral waves ! Delight that soars 

Imperially aloft and opes the doors 

From heaven to heaven, startling the eagle's 

sight, 
Aweing the constellations' aery flight, 
Beating back hosts clad in joy's dulcet frames, 
Immortal with Love's unconsuming flames, 
Through incensed air, o'er chant and cadent 

hymn, 
Past aisles of fiery wing-wrapped cherubim, 
Through dome resplendent, insufficient 
And helpless 'gainst o'erpowering event 



86 THE GREAT ASCENSION 

That bursts the unresisting bounds of space, 
For one long-absent and beloved Face, 
For one returning and victorious Soul, 
With Body captured from the earth's control, 
With vast processions of Love's liege and leal 
Chained to His chariot's redemption wheel. 



E'en seraph eye and high cherubic gaze 
Fall blinded by the wide outbursting blaze 
Of glory, — yet the straining soul is stirred 
By the sweet music of a secret word 
Spoken within the Holy Trinity, 
Translating into joy of new degree, — 
By the sweet motion of a bosomed beat 
Of strange enfolding, and the sudden heat 
Of such commingling as when fire meets fire 
In largeness, and unwonted flames aspire, 



THE GREAT ASCENSION 87 

Th' enclasping of t-h' Almighty Sire and Son, 
And in Their mystical reunion 
Manhood uplifted unto Godhood's place, 
Supernal venture of Eternal Grace, 
One universal basic consequence 
Of Heaven's great deed to cure Earth's great 
offence. 



XIX. 
LOVE'S DIFFUSING. 

A MYSTIC heaven is everywhere, 
Past heavens created, uncreate; 
Th' initiates chant, " 'T is here, 't is there ; 
Behold Love's high estate!" 

No lips may speak what Love bestows; 

No eyes may see what Faith beholds ; 
But rapture ravishing rapture grows, 

And glory's heart unfolds. 

One entered in past shame and death, 

Through light and white ascension mist ; 

The Lost returned,— a Flame, a Breath, 
The Universalist 

88 



love's diffusing 89 

Of Life and Power, for that He bore 

To Godhood's bosom manhood ; thence 

Outward to every sea and shore 
He poured munificence 

Diffusing Self from star to clod, 

Enlarged Life with sign and seal 

Of God in man, of man in God, 
For Love's Divine Ideal. 

O later Christ with greater goal 

Than resurrection ! Thou dost make 

Thy Hidden Presence in the soul 
Beatitudes that take 

The light that changes into power, 
The power that changes into life. 

Thus comes the consummation hour 
To immemorial strife. 



90 LOVES DIFFUSING 

O Soul that work'st by Love! in Thee 
Is Life that is the light of men, — 

Is Power that is God's energy 
In sons of God, as when 



The sons of God knew only light, 

Knew only power as holiness; 
As when all thought was one requite 

For Love's supreme impress, — 

As when the air was pure as wind 

Driven through white-heaten flame, and 
sweet 
As roses when Desire is blind 

And Faith and Rapture meet. 



XX. 



REDEMPTION'S REVEALINGS. 

/"*\H teach us Thy Fatherhood, 

Thou God, the Eternal Good! 

Reveal Thou our sonship divine ! 

Make love in us image of Thine! 

Create in us harmony 

Such as Christ had with Thee ! 

Then will Thy redemption's revealings 

In deeps of our thoughts and our feelings 

Throng forth as strong voices that cry 

To hosts of the earth and the sky: — 

"Ye are our brothers, beloveds ! we stop not atsoul ; 

We hail the consanguined and consonant whole, 
91 



92 REDEMPTION S REVEALINGS 

The lamb and the lion that lie together 

On mountain slopes of a peaceful time, 

In visions of Love's millennial weather, 

While all the bells of creation chime 

Past storm and the fiercer tempest of heart, 

While feebling clouds from the blue fall forever 

apart, 
And earth feels Heaven's miraculous tether. 
We hail the ineffable holy wonder, 
The Power that works above and under 
And realises the great regeneration 
Through universal Love's diffused vibration 
And universal rapture's hymnic thunder. 



XXI. 

INTERLUDE: INVOCATION TO THE POET. 

A NEWNESS entered the earth,— 
The earth that was eons old. 
Nor seer nor poet has girth 

Of vision or song to enfold 
The beauteous Miracle, 
The Infinite Wonder-spell. 



What is the newness? T is Love, O soul! 

Sing poet-seer, sing on ! 

Sing what the heavens gave thee for dole, 

Sing thou the Light that shone. 
93 



94 INVOCATION TO THE POET 

Thou wilt know God upon Nature's breast; 
Thou wilt have joy as thou venturest ; 
Sweet is the song that is Love-possessed. 
Sing poet-seer, sing on! 



What is the myst'ry? 'Tis Love, O soul! 

Sing, poet-seer, sing oh! 
Sing what the heavens gave thee for goal, 

Sing thou the Light that won. 
Thou wilt know Nature through Love divine; 
Thou wilt have life as thou drink'st Love's wine; 
Sweet is the song that is Love's true sign. 

Sing, poet-seer, sing on ! 



O poet! thou dost essay 
Where few have e'er made way. 



INVOCATION TO THE POET 95 

Some dared not the white-hot flame 
For want of the stronger frame 
Which faith and prayer make strong. 
Some dared not the mythus song 
For banners of scorn unfurled 
By sinners and saints of the world. 



O poet ! what singest thou ? 
And who did thee endow 
To hear what thou dost sing, 
To feel what thou dost bring? 



God fashions his poets witnesses 

Of thronal tropes, — th' unspoken " Yes" 

To Faith's unfailing endeavouring. 

"Who falters shall never the heights attain; 



96 INVOCATION TO THE POET 

Who questions shall never the vision gain ; 

Who trusts and ventures shall hear the strain, — 

The panting of Light's archangels, 

The chanting of Love's evangels. 

Hast thou not doubted ? Then poet, sing ! 



XXII. 
THE WONDER SPELL. 

A NEWNESS entered the earth,- 
The earth that was eons old ; 
Nor seer nor poet has girth 

Of vision or song to enfold 
The Beauteous Miracle, 
lhe Infinite Wonder Spell. 



Th' ascension entrance of flesh and blood 
Transfigured Creatorhood ; 
High God got gain out of manhood's loss 
By way of the lowly Cross ; 
7 97 



98 THE WONDER SPELL 

A sympathy forth from the essence of God 
Descended to every clod; 
Experience of the passion of pain 
Commingled itself with the rain; 
The sense of the sin-wrought burden of grief 
Invaded each blossom and leaf; 
Vicarious suffering of death and of doom 
Sank down into Nature's womb. 



The rapture of conquering holiness 

Spread forth in divine caress; 

Th' enchantment of Life indestructible 

The earth and the seas befell; 

The transport of Love's accomplishment 

With mountain and valley blent ; 

Th' exalting of manhood to Godhood's throne 

Restored Nature's vanished own, — 



THE WONDER SPELL 99 

Original Nature, — instinctive mind 

That soars with the winged wind, 

That leaps in the splash of the ocean's wave, 

That lies where the grasses pave 

Rejuvenant earth with emerald floor, 

That sings in the multiple score 

Of Nature's multiple worshippers, — 

Intuitive soul that stirs 

Asweet with the beat of the universe, 

Whose rhapsodies rehearse 

Th' eternal order, harmonic moods 

Of Love's solicitudes, — 

Informed sense that perceives the tread 

Of Lordship's feet, the spread 

Of regnant robes upon Nature's heart, 

That makes wild joyance start 

And mix with redemption's atmosphere 

Diffused from the God-man sheer. 



IOO THE WONDER SPELL 

I sing of an Infinite Dream; 

How came it — who knows? 
'T was Love's universal theme, 

The source from which flows 
The vision of prophet, the song 
Of poet the years prolong. 



XXIII. 
THE INFINITE WEAL. 

1 SING of an Infinite Dream; 

I sing of the richer earth; 
'T was Love's universal theme 

Before a desire had birth ; 
The Dream far-wrought into time, 
The earth and its golden prime. 



The Dream of God, the joy of purposing 
The Universal Beauty for the spring 
Of every goodness as th' Eternal Eye 
Beholds th' ascension movement, ecstasy 



102 THE INFINITE WEAL 

Pervasive, wakened earth with glory rife 
Which Life alone can give for working life, 
Which Love alone can give for working love, 
Through recognition of the powers that move 
Sweet essences to full embellishments, — 
Full rose, full forest, multifarious scents 
Sweetened by Love's restoring miracle, 
Regenerate forms and features 'scaped the spell 
Of prisoning which ancient evil wrought, 
And Love's deep healing in all things distraught, 
Expanding Paradise from wisdom's roots, 
Mankind's high lordship over all her shoots, 
Enlarging ravishment to eyes and ears, 
Perpetual perfecting whose progress clears 
The steeps of wonderment and wraps the earth 
With haze seraphical about the girth 
Of Faith exultant, Hope communicant 
And Love's continuing creative chant. 



THE INFINITE WEAL IO3 

Th' amending change is blown about the world, 

Mysterious, as if sweet incense, curled 

O'er naming altars, had been caught and spent 

By summer winds from distant sacrament. 

There spreads through earth a sacred sorcery; 

The rose is not the rose she used to be; 

The God-man's glory enters into her; 

She is become Love's chosen almoner 

Of psychic grace; albeit multitudes, 

Untaught, discern not Nature's dearest moods 

Of miracle, children and poets know, 

Birds warble apprehension, and the flow 

Of the deep music of the winds of morn 

Confesses incarnation. Life reborn 

Senses occult revealings. Nature feels 

The ties invisible, the countless seals 

Upon her breast, binding within her heart 

New potence that awaits man's subtle art, — 



104 THE INFINITE WEAL 

The art which is God's thronal influence 
In man's dominion thorough soul and sense, 
Restoring broken forms of Nature's sin-wrought 

shame 
Into the perfect glory of her primal frame. 



I sing of an Infinite Weal; 

'T was born with the Dream; 
'T is Love's perfect symbol and seal; 

The earth is its theme, — 
The earth for the man restored, 
Creation's unhindered hoard. 



XXIV. 

ROSE OF PARADISE. 

/~\ ROSE! thou wert waste and wild; 

But now thou art wild no more. 
Long, long hast thpu striven, exiled 

From Eden's primeval store, 
Without the blaming of earth or skies, 
To be, as thy passionate instinct cries, 
God's Rose of Paradise. 



Fair Paradise broke with the blow, 

Struck hard by an alien hand, 

On God's harmonious show 

Of Power in a sinless land; 
105 



106 ROSE OF PARADISE 

And beauty shrivelled, and glory waned, 
And Nature suffered with soul profaned, 
God's Rose of Love distrained. 



O Rose ! thou art perfecting fast — 

Since Christ has achieved for man, — 

With man's ascension; at last 

Thou 'It vanquish the ancient ban; 

Man's art will greaten with greatening soul; 

And thou, by his art, wilt reach thy goal, — 

God's Rose forever whole. 



XXV. 

THE MIRACLE. 

HPHE Miracle ! God's wonder sign and prophecy, 
The witness of th' Unseen, whose holy 
grace and power 
Make Heaven and earth agree 
For one symbolic hour, 
And Nature show her dower 
Of glory sprung from out th' eternal harmony. 



The Miracle! The fruit of Heaven's maturer 

might 

Wrought by superior Hands, sweet flower 

of evidence 

107 



Io8 THE MIRACLE 

Dropped from Deific height 

At Love's supreme expense, 

Which only spirits sense, 
Which only strained eyes of pure creation sight. 

The Miracle! The working of a Nature higher 
Than sky or sea or bruised earth's dis- 
ordered frame 
Or man, whose blind desire 
Turns unto sin and shame; 
A Nature whose white flame 
Wastes with consuming Love the evil's quench- 
less fire. 



The Miracle! Return of primal naturalness 

To Nature and to soul by primal sin pro- 
faned; 



THE MIRACLE I09 

A health the heavens possess, 

A grace the Christ obtained, 

A glory Love has gained, 
God's ever-purposed and forever-won redress. 



The Miracle! Expression of th' Almighty Will 
Whose effluence Nature is, the law of Heaven 
displayed 

For good's defeat of ill, 

For Love's high plan essayed, 
For man's perpetual aid, 

Until the Dream of God all being shall fulfil. 



The Miracle ! Appeal to Faith that feels the doom ; 
Appeal to Reason pressed by Fate's im- 
perious feet; 



IIO THE MIRACLE 

Heaven's flash above the gloom, 

Earth's undermusic sweet, 

While man and Nature meet 
About the Rose of Love that bursts to perfect 
bloom. 



XXVI. 

THE LARGER NATURE. 

f\ BLOSSOMINGS in wold and weald! 

Swing Love's new sweets. I sense the fold 
Of earth's evasive priests afield 
That cry, "Behold! Behold!" 

O thrushes in the orchard trees ! 

Sing Love's new songs. I hear the voice 
Of earth's hid Lord, the mysteries 

That cry, "Rejoice! Rejoice!" 

O clouds upon the mountain's spurs! 

Flaunt Love's new robes. I catch the trend 
Of earth's unvisioned ministers 

That cry, "Ascend! Ascend!" 



112 THE LARGER NATURE 

O stars within galactic mists ! 

Shed Love's new light. I feel the stress 
Of earth's occult evangelists 

That cry, "Possess! Possess!" 

O kindreds to creation's rim! 

Chant Love's new power. I know the lore 
Of earth's re-fashioned seraphim 

That cry, "Adore! Adore!" 



XXVII. 

THE GREAT RESPONDING. 

| JAIL happy poet soul that sees 
Fine forces, subtle sorceries 
Ascending fast from mount and vale, 
From stream and every irised trail 
Of cloud that floats across the blue 
And swells Love's holy retinue ! 
Hail happy poet soul that hears 
The quires of Love's high atmospheres 
And the new music of the day 
That comes with Love's increasing sway! 
The earth lies open; everything 
Is restless, softly quivering 

8 113 



114 THE GREAT RESPONDING 

Beneath faint feet invisible, 

Beneath sooth breathings, while the spell 

Of some sweet wonder lies aslant 

The world. Earth feels th' impassioned pant 

Of wakened heart, the setting free 

Of Nature's dulcet enginery. 

The sensive soul perceives the great 

Ascension grown articulate, 

Feels the regeneration, lists 

To Nature's happy sorcerists 

That meet upon the skyward ways 

Antiphonal with holy praise 

Within the wide circumference 

Of purifying soul and sense. 

He sees the higher forces move; 

He views the radiant form of Love 

Borne up by wings processional, 

While clouds of glory rise and fall, 



THE GREAT RESPONDING II 5 

And Love's redemptional decrees 
Resolve in widening harmonies, — 
The vast evolving of God's thought, 
Th' achieving of th' Eternal Ought, 
Love's victory divine o'er evil's horde, 
The primal order of the world restored. 



XXVIII. 

THE INFINITE HOPE. 

T SING of an Infinite Dream; 
I sing of ascension strife; 
T was Love's universal theme, 

And Faith is its law and life- 
The Dream that is history- 
Achieving divine decree. 



The Dream of God risen on His holiness ! 

God- hunger taking shape; th' eternal stress 

Of Beauty hid within th' Omnific Mind 

And waiting for the nuptial hour assigned 
116 



THE INFINITE HOPE 117 

Of Time and Space, the Word and the Event 
Of firmament o'erlapping firmament 
With spheric hosts; Beauty for portraiture 
Of Beauty uncreate. Thus on God's pure 
Infinitude His infinite Desire 
He framed in outlines of prophetic fire. 
The primal flame rays through all nebulae, 
Through burnt-out suns and stars that wander 

free 
Across the blue and black of changing skies, 
And rests Love's latest beam on latest eyes, 
Waking the slumbering soul to birthright sense 
And new aspiring after Love's expense. 



The Dream of God risen on His loneliness! 
God-hunger taking shape; th' eternal stress 
Of Love for love, for that high comradeship 



Il8 THE INFINITE HOPE 

Of Sire and sons which makes the mortal slip 

Into the homing of Immortal Good 

Like infancy to bosoming motherhood, 

Finding in God its life's continuing, 

Finding in Love the immemorial spring 

Of every joyance and that deep reserve 

Of purpose mixed with power, whereunto swerve 

All things for guerdons wrought for filial state 

Responding to the Grace Inviolate. 



The Dream of God risen on His tenderness! 

God-hunger taking shape ; th' eternal stress 

Of Love for sake of others, giving vent 

To Love's vast reservoir of ravishment, 

To Love's great stream of sweetness, whose deep 

well 
Lies fathomless and irrepressible 



THE INFINITE HOPE II9 

Within th' Uncomprehended, — for one aim 
Of Love throughout creation's subtle frame, 
Of Love for sake of others, myriads meet 
To drink Love's wine of joy, Love's food to eat, 
To hear Love's voice, and chant antiphonals 
Of their God-rapture back into His halls 
Of glory seraph-thronged where'er His goodness 
calls. 



I sing of an Infinite Hope; 

'T was born with the Dream; 
'T is Love's perfect horoscope; 

The soul is its theme; 
Let poet sing it who can, 
God's dream of the larger man ! 



XXIX. 
THE GOLDEN VISION. 

A S heart believes so eye discerns 

The larger Nature, since the sway 
Of God-embosomed manhood turns 
The wheels of Night and Day, 

And Love redemptive penetrates 

Man's every kindred, — beast and bird, 

The air, the flower, that wooes and waits 
His reconstruction word, 

For all the dream when earth was young, 
For all the dream of later youth, 

For every golden vision sung, 
Each horoscope of truth. 



THE GOLDEN VISION 121 

Hail manhood's art! Thou hast event 
In Godhood's new diffusing, lost 

Through sin but now in sweet descent 
With Nature's pulsings crossed. 

Hail holy art! Withouten thee 

Th' entranced globe were ever chained. 
Thou greatenest every destiny 

By what High Love has gained. 

Hail Nature's every seed and spring! 

Receptive to the art of man; 
With earth and soul recovering 

Creation's primal plan. 

Hail Nature, holy Nature! new 

With thy Creator's racial heart 
Risen throneward through ibhy curse, and through 

Love's victory the part 



122 THE GOLDEN VISION 

In thee that makes responsiveness 
At every pore to every call 

Of man who hastens to possess 
His birthright's mystic thrall. 

Rise soul, and chant the sacred theme ! 

All Nature waits, Love's happy slave, 
To shape, with thee, from dust the dream 

Love's ancient triumph gave- 



XXX. 

THE LARGER MAN. 

TPHE iron chains that bound the soul 
And Nature in commingling curse 
Have turned to gold. Redemption's goal 
Involves the universe. 

They fell as one, as one they rise, 

God's mutual helpers toward the end 

Toward which exert prophetic eyes 
And songs of poets blend. 

The larger man! Though sinew shrank, 

Imperious Love prevailed at length; 

The mystic wine of faith he drank 

Made quick his pulse with strength. 
123 



124 THE LARGER MAN 

The larger man ! Though reason reeled, 

A spirit kinship worsted clod; 
The heavenly flow of power revealed 

Th' impinging thoughts of God. 

The larger man ! Though unction stopped, 

One Greater Heart leaped up and flamed, 

And one great wound for Love o'ertopped 
What else desire had claimed. 

The larger man! from alien land 

Nature's dominion lord returned! 

Henceforth through his a pierced Hand 
Shall plough what once was spurned, — 

Shall plant and reap and garner in 

The fruits of world-wide service, see 

Love's travail which at last doth win 
Eternal victory. 



XXXI. 

RECLAMATION. 

/^""^OD'S thought is more than miracle; 

The mind of miracle diffused 
Into Love's universal spell 
Of Omnipresence used 

To build vast engineries of trust, 

To fling far spans from soul to soul, 

To lift great pillars out of dust 
And tracks of hope unroll 

Across illumined continents, 

Whose freightage is the one in all 

And all in one, for vast events 

Reclaimed from selfdom's thrall. 
125 



126 RECLAMATION 

Redemptive Love! Thou Marriager 

Of Man and Nature! Thou dost bind 

In affluent union him and her 

Whom sin left poor and blind. 

Hail Man and Nature ! Life's new frames, 
Round which th' inviting eons throng! 

Ye spring together as two flames 
Empyreal and strong, 

White-heaten at the Heart of Christ, — 

God's purifiers, stablishing 
The later world re-paradised, 

Where man restored is king, 

While one expanding order turns 

Ideals into history, 
And every centuried worth discerns 

Its essence purged and free. 



XXXII. 

RECONSTRUCTION. 

r*\EAD faith of Greece! thou art reborn; 

The pipes of Pan resound afresh ; 
Superior nymphs thy groves adorn, — 
New poise of soul and flesh. 

Past hope of Ind! thou art renewed; 

The golden lotus blooms again; — 
Re-incarnation's deeper mood 

Beyond the Vedas' ken. 

Lost dream of Egypt ! thou art found ; 

The lips of Memnon hail the sun; 
The Sphinx's loosened tongues expound 

Th' enigma Love has won. 

T27 



128 RECONSTRUCTION 

Love solves the riddle of the earth; 

So changes labyrinth to spire; 
The modern Phoenix springs to birth 

Out of its ancient pyre. 

Forth soul! the stars in choral march 

Chant o'er and strive for thee as thou 

For them, as for the heaven's blue arch 
Labour the lyre and plough. 

Illumined soul that sees and hears 

The vision and the song! thy course 

And Love's are one among the spheres, — 
One light, one life, one force. 



XXXIII. 
THE INFINITE CHEER. 

I SING of the Infinite Dream; 

I sing of the larger man; 
'T was Love's universal theme 

Since ever the stars began; 
The Dream that is but half -through ; 
The man that is but half -new. 



Assiduous Weaver, Love ! Through centuriedloom 

Thy fiery shuttles flew 'mid gleam and gloom; 

E'en swifter now they flash like flying flame; 

How grows Thy shining garment round God's 

frame 

o 129 



I30 THE INFINITE CHEER 

For the great bridal-day of Soul and Sense, 
The Sacrificial Heart's full recompense! 
It comes, it comes, the long expected time! 
The thought thereof turns passion into rime 
And sets the soul to music of the stars 
Forever singing with Hope's Avatars. 



The larger Nature and the larger Man, — 
God's complements of grace ! When Love o'erran 
The winds and waves and the familiar earth, 
He simultaneous brought the soul to birth, 
And glorified the Dream in the new race, — 
The Dream that broods above the new embrace. 



A clearer eye to see where Love doth touch 
The world and fashion duty, where the crutch, 



THE INFINITE CHEER I3I 

Wrought of one great and ancient olive-tree, 
Doth grace the hands of clay's infirmity, — 
A keener ear to hear, as Love doth play 
Thrilling despair with music and decay 
With selfsame strains that keep the angels 

young, 
And giving every mouth a seraph's tongue, — 
A finer nerve to feel, as Love doth breathe 
Appreciation, crowns of kindness wreathe 
O'er pallid brows or lay at weary feet 
On thorny ways, counting denial sweet, — 
A kindlier soul to sense beatitude 
Throbbing in Life and Nature's every mood 
As Love doth strive to show the broken Heart 
Of Deity become man's counterpart; — 
These are the testimonial attributes 
Of men, who, climbing, have outstripped the 

brutes, 



132 THE INFINITE CHEER 

And wrought upon the Dream of ages past 
The brotherhood of man for which God's Dream 
is cast. 



I sing of an Infinite Cheer, — 

'T was born with the Dream; 

'T is Love's perfect atmosphere; 
The world is its theme; 

The man for the total race; 

The world for the man's embrace. 



XXXIV. 

THE LARGER WORLD. 

A SPOT in one vast acreage; 

Round holy shrine Love's roses blow; 
Lips meet, find sweet and doubly sage 
Earth's microcosmic show 

Of that great bliss when Love shall win 
All orbs, all races, subtly dome 

All hymeneal hearths within 
The Father's costly home. 

One life, one law, one larger world 

Of millions, hearts and hearths secure 

Beneath one blood-earned flag unfurled, 

The timely miniature 
133 



134 THE LARGER WORLD 

Of that eternal commonweal, 

Democracy with God for King, 

With stars for states, and every wheel 
For Love's adventuring. 

One comradeship of faith and hope, 
One vision blest from bended knee, 

Within whose wide cathedral cope 
Stands Love's epitome 

Of that great City Mystical 

Seen faintly as the skies divide 

Prayer-forced, whose dignities forestall 
The glory certified 

To sacrifice that gathers out 

From prison, brothel, slum, and street 
And deserts of despair and doubt 

Into Love's gardens sweet 



THE LARGER WORLD 135 

God's roses, trodden, broken, meant 
By Him for all a rose becomes 

When claimed for God by Love forspent 
Through Love's millenniums. 



XXXV. 
THE INFINITE TRUST. 

I SING of the Infinite Dream; 

I sing of the Universe; 
'T was Love's immemorial theme 

Which Wisdom shall e'er rehearse; 
The Dream that comes to event 
In Love's perfect lavishment. 



O Love, that work'st for earth and man the same, 

For highest sake of each ! Thine ancient fame 

Covers the firmament, o'er every sphere 

Broods as a holy sweetness making clear 
136 



THE INFINITE TRUST 1 37 

God's great Creatorship and Governance, 
The ground of every rapture and romance, 
The source of Nature's wide apocalypse 
Of goodness whose endeavouring outstrips 
The farthest spaces to remotest spark 
As did the first light-flash in primal dark. 
The spheres in canons sing and march in file 
Processional around Thee. Every aisle 
Of blue is thronged with flame-winged seraphim. 
And from the dusky earth, whose humours rim 
Thy garment's hem of splendour, chants ascend 
Of bloom and bird and roaming kine that 

blend 
With dust's deep rhythmic incense, making 

one 
Sweet symphony of gladness round the sun; 
While man meets angels on the lowest ways, 
Blends with their music his impulsive praise, 



I38 THE INFINITE TRUST 

And knows that Love doth ever work God's 

Dream, — 
God who is Love, Christ given to redeem. 



I sing of an Infinite Trust, 

'T was born with the Dream; 

*T is Love's perfect vision of dust; 
The stars are its theme, 

The numberless spheres, and the goal 

Attained for Nature and soul. 



XXXVI. 

THE DREAM'S FULFILMENT. 

"T7R0M earth to Heaven most filially 

The songs of recognition rise; 
A fealty belts the azure sea 

And sinks within the skies. 

God's Universe! I sense thee mine; 

I know and take at every turn 
Love's sacramental bread and wine 

And feel my nature burn 

With one pervading holy flame, 

An unconsuming fire wherein 

Mysterious angels hide and claim 

Myself their lasting kin. 
139 



I40 THE DREAM S FULFILMENT 

From star to star the music runs 

In later fugues from ancient themes, 

As round innumerable suns 

Range Love's harmonic dreams. 



The heavens and earth are twain no more ; 

The marriage of the Universe 
To Love is come, the vows Love swore 

Spheres crowding spheres rehearse. 



XXXVII. 

THE CHANT TRIUMPHAL. 

/"\ BRIDEGROOM, behold Thy Bride! 

Thou madest her fair and beautiful 
To be Thy glory and pride; 
And Thou shalt be satisfied 

In her the unceasingly dutiful, — 
The body of all Life's essences 
Recovered for Thy caress; 
The instrument of Time's perfecting 
In fulness for Thee, the King. 
She is to be Thy Heart's Delight, 

Which none from Thee can sever, 

And fashion by Thine immediate might 

The Dream of God forever. 
141 



I42 THE CHANT TRIUMPHAL 

Light fills the etheric abysms with life ensouled; 
Joy lines with rhythmical graces ascension 
ways; 
The sons of the Lord shout forth with the glad- 
ness of old; 
The stars of the morning sing as in ancient 
days; 
The sea has a song that is strange on her foaming 
lips; 
The earth is vocal with paeans unheard 
before ; 
The air is vibrant with music that rises and slips 
From sphere unto sphere which never the 
blue sky bore; 
'T is one great newness that bursts into hymnic 

rapture, 
One gratitude vast of captives o'er Love's high 
capture, 



THE CHANT TRIUMPHAL 143 

The illimitable chorus of exultation, 

The chant triumphal of redeemed creation: — 



"0 Love! Thou hast triumphed at last; 

Thy trumpets of victory sound; 
The days of Thy travail are past; 

And now Thou art throned and crowned 
With fruits of Thy holy adventuring, 
The Universe's King. 



" O Love! Thou hast saved us from doom, — 

Redeemer of Nature and Soul! 
We burst from the prison and tomb, 

We rise Thy regenerate whole, 
Thy cleansed, Thy renewed, Thine adoring host 
Restored to the Eden lost. 



144 THE CHANT TRIUMPHAL 

" O Love, who art Christ ! we are Thine ; 

We bathe in Thy rapturous floods; 
We feel the inflowing divine — 

Thy power in our spirits and bloods, 
The death of the mystical curse, and the stream 
Of Life that fulfils God's Dream." 



XXXVIII. 
POSTLUDE: THE SONG UNENDING. 

'T'HE poet's song is ended; but th' unsung 

Goes onward outward, rays of rime. 
Who dares to follow where God's Dream has 

swung 
Finds all his verse a halting mime 
Of the great music, and the voices far 
That chant across the skies from star to star 
The lilt of Love's millennial tongue, 
And Love's perennial prime. 

High Love who visitest the poet's heart 
And giv'st rich guerdons for attempt to sing! 

10 145 



146 postlude: the song unending 

Thou mak'st him and his kind integral part 
Of Thine illimitable wayfaring; 
And while he may but lisp a paltry strain 
Of the great paean of creation's whole, 
'T is his, because of faith, in moments fain, 
To hearken with th' unsullied birds, and roll 
With them his matin music toward the sky 
In simple minstrelsy. 

High Love whose white imponderable feet 

Soar star-wide! — thus the poet strives 

To follow with his song 

Thy winding wildering ways of vantage sweet, 

The heights Thy dazzling joyance rives, 

The flame that trails along 

From sphere to sphere and melts the clouds 

And pales th' empyreal blue that crowds 

The light with solemn rush of ecstasies. 



postlude: the song unending 147 

Alas! the poet's strenuous fancies miss 
The path and fall intoxicate 
Against the blinding bars of fate, 
Lost in th' expanse of universal bliss. 



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